Instructions

Assume that you are working at ETPI's marketing department. Answer the questions and prompts asked in the scenario.

The department intends to participate in several trade shows this year. While the marketing department has relied on some rules of thumb regarding staffing the booth in the past, more rigorous analysis will be used this year. As the consultant, you will figure out staffing levels using queuing theory or, synonymously, waiting line analysis.

Waiting line analysis

Past experience has shown that there are busy times and lulls at the ETPI booth during the course of the day. The hour before the start of the educational presentations is busy, lunch is busy, and the hours from 3 pm to 6 pm are busy. All other hours are slack.

1) During busy times, 60 potential customers per hour arrive at the booth (assume a Poisson distribution). A booth worker takes 5 minutes, on average, to meet the information needs of a potential customer (assume an exponential distribution).

• How many booth workers are required for the average potential customer to spend no more than 5 minutes waiting and being served? How many potential customers are waiting to be served, on average? What is the utilization rate of the booth workers?

• How many booth workers are required for the average potential customer to spend no more than 4 minutes waiting and being served? How many potential customers are waiting to be served, on average? What is the utilization rate of the booth workers?

2) During slack times, 10 potential customers per hour arrive at the booth (assume a Poisson distribution). A booth worker takes 5 minutes, on average, to meet the information needs of a potential customer (assume an exponential distribution).

• How many booth workers are required for the average potential customer to spend no more than 5 minutes waiting and being served? How many potential customers are waiting to be served, on average? What is the utilization rate of the booth workers?

• How many booth workers are required for the average potential customer to spend no more than 4 minutes waiting and being served? How many potential customers are waiting to be served, on average? What is the utilization rate of the booth workers?

Requirements

In order to successfully complete this assignment, you must:

• Make few or no grammatical, spelling, or syntactical errors.

• Show any or all of the following:

o Critical thinking

o Original thinking

o Researched examples

- Critical/original thinking: Demonstrate new approaches and/or ability to "push back" rather than simply reproducing another's thoughts

• Use direct quotations sparingly and judiciously

• Properly identify any sources and integrate into own thoughts and ideas

• Provide a straightforward, easy-to-follow arrangement with appropriate formatting:

o Comply with APA format

o Answers clearly marked and named within assignment file(s)

• Create a Word document and name it using the following convention: "YourName-M3-assignment"

• On the Word document, answer the prompts listed above in about 1-2 pages of text, plus charts and tables